Princeton's Lawrence Rosen to discuss indigenous cultural heritage May 3

Western Washington University’s Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies and Center for Law, Diversity and Justice will host professor Lawrence Rosen of Princeton University to discuss “The Metaphors of Indigenous Cultural Heritage” at 7 p.m., Tuesday, May 3, in the Fairhaven College Auditorium on WWU’s campus.

Rosen will explore how different metaphors affect the ways in which we think, legally and politically, about the rights of indigenous peoples in their cultural products. Rosen will discuss if they should be viewed as property, one's brainchild, a moral right or as a collective heritage and what metaphors indigenous peoples use. By considering the repercussions of these analogies and exploring such issues as material artifacts, religious objects, genetic items, and medicinal products we can think more carefully about how, as a matter of policy and mutual respect, we can address this unique situation.

Rosen is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of Anthropology at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1977, and adjunct professor of Law at Columbia Law School since 1979. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, he earned his bachelor’s degree at Brandeis University and his master’s and law degree at the University of Chicago. As an anthropologist he has worked mostly in North Africa on Arab social life and Islamic law; as an attorney he has worked mostly on the rights of indigenous peoples and American socio-legal issues.

For more information contact Julie Helling, WWU associate professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, at (360) 650-4907 or julie.helling@wwu.edu.